Healthcare Supply Chain Standards Coalition Endorses Standards For Organizational And Product Identifiers

Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 23 Oct 2007 - 2:00 PDT

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In a major step aimed at making healthcare more affordable while strengthening patient safety and outcomes, the Healthcare Supply Chain Standards Coalition (Standards Coalition) is calling for industry-wide adoption of organizational and product identifiers from GS1, an international organization dedicated to designing and implementing supply chain standards. Specifically, the Standards Coalition, a collaborative of 28 organizations representing the entire healthcare supply chain, is endorsing GS1's Global Location Number (GLN) for organizational identification and its Global Trade Identification Number (GTIN) for product identification.

"We have the opportunity-and truly, the obligation, as an industry--to transform how we do business," says Joseph Dudas, Standards Coalition co-chairman and Mayo Clinic's director of accounting and supply chain informatics. "With universal standards, every supply chain participant will be able to identify every organization and every product the same way. This is a monumental step forward from our current state, where trading partners record organizational and product information differently and often manually, leading to tremendous inefficiency, waste, and inaccuracy, as well as countless opportunities for error."

To reach its endorsements, the Standards Coalition spent the past year scoping the business problems, collecting industry input about identifiers, and evaluating standards options. As part of this effort, it conducted a survey that found 69 percent of 129 respondents were considering adopting an organizational identifier. Almost two-thirds said they were considering adopting GS1's GLN.

"After much work and consideration by the Standards Coalition subcommittees, we concluded that GS1's standards offered the best solutions for the industry," says Stephen D. Christian, Standards Coalition co-chairman. "GS1 offered a viable global approach, which is essential today, and healthcare organizations in other countries have already begun using its GLN and GTIN standards. GS1 has a successful track record that dates back to the universal product code (UPC) that was adopted by the retail and grocery industries over 30 years ago. We are working with GS1 standards to bring that measure of success to healthcare and streamline transactions and information across the entire supply chain."

To aggressively move the industry toward adoption, the Standards Coalition is actively working with GS1 to enhance its standards to meet healthcare's needs. The Standards Coalition is also recommending GS1's Global Data Synchronization Network (GDSN) serve as the healthcare industry's system for registering, validating, disseminating, and synchronizing product identification information.

In addition, the Standards Coalition plans to shortly introduce implementation roadmaps for supply chain participants, including providers, manufacturers, distributors, and group purchasing organizations. The Standards Coalition also has launched a website, http://www.hscsc.org, for healthcare organizations to learn more about the standards and other industry and government initiatives related to standards adoption and implementation.

Members of the Standard's Coalition Oversight Committee are:

- Abbott
- American Hospital Association
- Amerinet
- Ascension Health
- Association for Healthcare Resource & Materials Management (AHRMM)
- BD
- Cardinal Health
- Coalition for Healthcare eStandards (CHeS)
- Consorta Catholic Resource Partners
- U.S. Department of Defense
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
- Geisinger Health System Foundation
- GHX
- HCA
- Inland Northwest Health Services
- Intermountain Healthcare
- Johnson & Johnson Med. Devices & Diagnostics
- Lawson
- Mayo Clinic
- McKesson Corporation
- MedAssets
- Mercy Health Systems ROI
- Owens & Minor
- Novation
- Premier, Inc.
- Sentara Healthcare
- Strategic Marketplace Initiative (SMI)
- University Hospitals

About the Healthcare Supply Chain Standards Coalition

The Healthcare Supply Chain Standards Coalition is a collaborative of organizations representing the entire healthcare supply chain working to enable the delivery of quality patient care in a cost-effective and efficient manner through the adoption of industry standards. The Standards Coalition utilizes a rigorous and transparent process, facilitated by The National Alliance for Health Information Technology, to make recommendations on specific standards and plans for enabling their use. The Standards Coalition is comprised of healthcare providers, suppliers, group purchasing organizations, technology companies, industry associations, and governmental entities. More information is available at http://www.hscsc.org

About GS1

GS1 is a leading global organization dedicated to the design and implementation of global standards and solutions to improve the efficiency and visibility of supply and demand chains globally and across sectors. The GS1 system of standards is the most widely used supply chain standards system in the world. More information is available at http://www.gs1.com.

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